Story+1985-08-31+East+Rutherford,+NJ

“We were down in Texas…on the first part of our American tour… there were a lot of folks that’d come down there from up north…out of Detroit…Pittsburgh…they packed up their wife and kids and went down south…hoping to find work on the oil fields, in the oil refineries…and when they got down there, the price of oil dropped… and the boom town they thought they were gonna find ended up being a bust…so they end up sleeping in tents on the side of the highway…of sleeping in their cars at night…with nothing to do…no work and no place to go…this is called “Seeds”…”
 * 31.08.85 East Rutherford, NJ, intro to “Seeds”**

“(?)…oh man…I remember when I was a kid…my old man had this trick he used to play on me all the time…he’d always come…he’d sit in the kitchen at night, shut off the lights and…he’d lock up the front door so that I used to have to come in ‘round the side so he could tell what time I was coming in (crowd cheers) and I used to have real long hair, very long hair, down to my shoulders (crowd cheers) and he used to hate it, used to hate it so much…and I remember standing out in the driveway and pulling my collar up, tuck it down inside so that he couldn’t tell how long it was…and, uh …I’d get my nerve up, get up on the porch, get in through the screen door, get in through the living room…and just as I put my foot on that bottom step…I heard “Bruuuce” (crowd cheers) and he’d call me to come back and sit down with him…and I used to sit there for about ten minutes, we wouldn’t say anything and then he’d ask me what I thought I was doing with myself and I could never explain it to him, that was the problem…and I always remember him being angry, so angry all the time…and, uh, it wasn’t till I got older that I realized what it, how hard it was… searching around for work all the time…and what living in a house with a lot of unemployment does, can do to you…we just came out of Pittsburgh where in the Monongahela Valley in the last five years they went from 23,000 steel worker jobs down to 3,000…but the jobs may go away but the people don’t and the big steel companies’ disinvestment in their own country’s production…leaves all these people out in the cold…and it’s real cold out there…so this is a song about living in the shadow of a dream…”
 * 31.08.85 East Rutherford, NJ, intro to “The River”**

“Ready for a little road trip? (crowd cheers) come on, Band…”
 * 31.08.85 East Rutherford, NJ, intro to “Darlington County”**

“I’m coming to get you (crowd cheers) don’t worry, it ain’t gonna hurt (crowd cheers) just a little bit…[the sing-along] damn ain’t I good looking? (crowd: “Yeah, yeah, yeah”) yeah, you are, you are (crowd cheers) looking good…man, sometimes I’m feeling old, man…I’m 35 now…and I check the mirror all the time for like wrinkles and, you know, if I still got my hair left…getting old, man… sometimes I lay in bed at night (crowd cheers) I always sleep with my guitar (crowd cheers) at first my wife didn’t like it but she got used to it (crowd cheers) gotta take the whole package, man (chuckles) oh, anyway, this is a song about time’s winged chariot… and how in the end it ain’t nothing but glory days…ready, Band?... ready, people? (crowd cheers)…”
 * 31.08.85 East Rutherford, NJ, intro to “Glory Days”**

“Oh yeah…yeah, oh…no matter how old you get…you gotta keep searching for that Promised Land (crowd cheers)…”
 * 31.08.85 East Rutherford, NJ, intro to “The Promised Land”**

“I was telling some folks the other night that no matter where you go, it seems that whenever you mention the name of that place, people always cheer…so let’s try it out, alright?...New Jersey (crowd cheers) New York (crowd cheers) you see that always works (chuckles)…so I got to thinking about and I said “Well, the reason that people must cheer when they hear the name of their town is they must be proud of the place that they live (crowd cheers) and if that’s true, then they must be interested in getting involved in something that’d make the place they live a better place (crowd cheers) and so tonight in the audience we got members from the New Jersey Citizens’ Action (crowd cheers) and the New York Community Action Network (crowd cheers) these are a coalition of labor and church leaders and just plain citizens who are out there trying to give the low and moderate income citizens a bigger voice in the democratic process (crowd cheers) and the New Jersey Citizens’ Action-group, they just led a successful fight for the Right to No-Act and the Right to No-Act is the strongest chemical disclosure law in the country…that means that the firms have to let the citizens and the working people know about the chemicals and hazardous waste that are in the neighborhoods, that are in the work places (crowd cheers) like you know, here in New Jersey we got one of the worst chemical waste problems in the whole country…this is just one of the…one of the things that they’re involved in, they organize voter-registration, but the main thing is it’s a membership organization, it’s open to any citizen, you can go out there in the lobby tonight and get their number and call ‘em up and find out what they’re all about and, uh…they’re out there fighting for your families, for a better community…and, uh, I guess what I’m trying to say is they can use your support…they’re here trying to make New Jersey and New York a better and a more decent and a fairer place to live for all its citizens (crowd cheers) so New York Community Action Network and the New Jersey Citizens’ Action [the ending of the intro missing from the tape.]…”
 * 31.08.85 East Rutherford, NJ, intro to “My Hometown”**

“Thanks…we’re gonna take a short break…if you go out into the lobby, please remember the numbers for New Jersey Citizen’s Action and New York Community Action Network, they’re out there making some of these ideas that we’re singing about real in everyday, in everyday life and they can use your help…and don’t go away because we’re gonna come back to take you to the (?) of total insanity (crowd cheers)…”
 * 31.08.85 East Rutherford, NJ, after “Thunder Road”**

“Hey, Baby…now sometimes I feel…I get feeling so empty inside… and just so lonely…feels like there ain’t nothing ever…ever, ever gonna go right…and that’s when I wanna reach out for some help (crowd cheers) because I need somebody (crowd cheers) and I just wanna say…where are you now?...hey, come on, Baby…”
 * 31.08.85 East Rutherford, NJ, towards the end of “Dancing in the Dark”**

“Now if you’re hungry inside, shout it out! (crowd cheers)…”
 * 31.08.85 East Rutherford, NJ, at the end of “Hungry Heart”**

“Has anybody seen my 1959 Cadillac out there? (crowd cheers)…”
 * 31.08.85 East Rutherford, NJ, intro to “Cadillac Ranch”**

“I always remember…my folks always having to work so hard…I remember my mom going down to the finance man, borrowing money for Christmas and getting it paid back in time to borrow money for Easter…and getting it paid back just in time to buy us school clothes…always and always and always…but for some reason…it seemed like…she never let it show that it bothered her… but I remember that it bothered my dad…and he’d sit around thinking about everything that we wasn’t ever gonna have…till I’d start thinking like that too…and I’d lay in bed at night…thinking that if something didn’t happen…if something didn’t change…I felt like someday I was just gonna…someday I was just gonna…someday I’d just…I felt like I was just gonna…I felt like I just…”
 * 31.08.85 East Rutherford, NJ, intro to “I’m on Fire”**

“This is for our old fans out there (crowd cheers)…it was a long, long time ago (crowd cheers) not very far from this very place (crowd cheers) once upon a time… (…) Well, now, there I was…I was still in high school…but I was doing bad…I used to sit in class and just kind of look out the window and daydream all the time (crowd cheers) so they finally sent me down to the guidance counselor (crowd cheers) so I walked in…he said…”Mr. Springsteen (crowd cheers) what seems to be your problem?” I said “Well, Sir, see, it’s like I don’t know what I wanna do with myself, I’m not interested in any of my studies, I’m not like, uh, I don’t have any faith in anything, I don’t have any hope, I don’t have any desire, I don’t have any close interpersonal relationship with a member of the opposite sex!” (crowd cheers) He says “That’s, that’s too big a problem for me, you better go home and talk to your folks”…so I went home…went in the kitchen, my dad was there, I said “Pop, I’m in, I’m in a lot of trouble now, you know, they sent me home from school and I don’t know what I’m gonna do when I get out of school, I’m not interested in anything, I don’t have, uh, I don’t have any faith in anything, I don’t have any hope, I don’t wanna live or die”…and he said “Get me another beer out of the icebox” (crowd cheers) so that was it, I decided I was gonna do myself in, I was gonna say “Goodbye, cruel world,” I was gonna go down to the ocean and jump in and drown myself (crowd: “No”) yeah!...so I hitchhiked down to Asbury Park (crowd cheers) before I was gonna drown myself I decided I had to go to bathroom first so I went into this little bar and I went into the men’s room and on the wall it said “Advice and answer to all problems, call this number”…so I went outside, put a dime in the phone, dialed the number, it rang once, it rang twice and then I heard [Clarence: “Hello”] (crowd cheers) it was some guy named Clarence “He who knows all” Clemons (crowd cheers) so I told him what my problem was and he said he thought that he could help me out, he gave me his address, I hitchhiked over to his house, knocked on the door [knocking sounds from the bass drum] the door opened up…we kind of stood there and checked each other out for a minute (crowd cheers) we decided that we’d make a good team and we became partners (crowd cheers) now Clarence, he’d been having his own problems and he went to see this gypsy down on the Boardwalk (crowd cheers) you know who I’m talking ‘bout (chuckles) and she sold him this map to the secret of the world and, according to Clarence, if we followed this map at midnight that night we’d find the answer to all our problems…so that night we got in Clarence’s Oldsmobile, we packed plenty of peanutbutter-and-jelly sandwiches (crowd cheers) and we started driving south on Route 9 (crowd cheers) we went down through Freehold (crowd cheers) we went down through Lakewood (crowd cheers) we went down past Toms River (crowd cheers) way down deep into the pines (crowd cheers) then it started raining and then a blizzard started hitting us and then a hurricane came along and then a heatwave hit and then a tornado came sweeping across the highway and then, and then the roof flew off the car and then we got two flat tires, then the engine block cracked, then the fender fell off, then the carburetor broke, then the gas pedal blew off and then and then the radio broke!!! (crowd cheers) so there we were on the side of this dark road and according to the map what we were looking for was just on the other side of those woods…so into the forest we went…it was scary in there…there were noises coming from everyplace (crowd cheers) there were werewolves howling (crowd howls) there were homicidal cows mooing (crowd moos) there were mad dogs barking (crowd barks) there was the Jersey Devil out there! (crowd cheers) now, Big Man, there ain’t no like wild beasts, I’ve never heard of like nobody getting ate alive in New Jersey or nothing…there is no like killer, like killer squirrels or like nothing like, you know…we’re safe in here, don’t you think? you sure?...I think I hear something behind us, there’s something behind us (crowd cheers) AAAHHH! all of a sudden, all of a sudden there were these two man-eating bears but, but like instead of jumping on us and making us their dinner, they were acting kind of friendly and they said, they said that they didn’t hurt or maul anybody but that they were just lonely, that they’d been out here in the woods, they ran away from the circus, they got tired of being in a cage, that they’d been out here all by themselves for a long time and they wanted some buddies and so they said if we’d be their friends that they’d take us to what we were looking for (crowd cheers) so back…back into the forest we went…and there in the clearing…we saw the answer to our quest [Bruce’s guitar and Clarence’s saxophone](crowd cheers) when we stood there in the moonlight and we knew that everything was gonna be alright…because…because…when we touched (crowd cheers)…”
 * 31.08.85 East Rutherford, NJ, intro to “Growin’ Up”**

“Thanks, thanks a lot (crowd cheers) oh, this is, uh…I wanna take a minute and thank everybody for coming down to the show (crowd cheers) thank you very much…you know, this is, uh…this is now I guess probably…I think I’ve had more fun this year than I’ve ever had in my whole life (crowd cheers) coming back to Jersey and being home like this is...I just relax (chuckles)(crowd cheers)…I’d like to this song for you, this song is about, I guess, the greatest song that’s ever been written about America…because it, uh, it was written by Woody Guthrie and it gets right to the heart of the promise of what our country was supposed to be about…and, uh, as we sit here tonight, that’s a promise that’s…it’s eroding for many of our fellow citizens, I don’t know if you’d talk to the steel workers out in Pittsburgh or Gary, Indiana or in East L.A…or the farmers out in the Midwest that are losing their farms, I don’t know if they believe that this song is true any more…and I’m not sure that it is but I know that it ought to be (crowd cheers) and, uh…it’s up to each and every one of us to do something about it somehow (crowd cheers) so…because with countries, just like with people, it’s easy to let the best of yourself slip away…”
 * 31.08.85 East Rutherford, NJ, intro to “This Land Is Your Land”**

“Remember: in the end nobody wins ‘less everybody wins…”
 * 31.08.85 East Rutherford, NJ, intro to “Born to Run”**

“You better protect yourselves, this might be dangerous…”
 * 31.08.85 East Rutherford, NJ, intro to “Two Hearts”**

“Now can you stand yourself out there? (crowd cheers) good!... (…) Feeling kind of loose now (crowd cheers) how you doing, Big Man? (Clarence: “Big Man grooving”) alright…Steven, how you doing, man? (Steve: “Fine”)(crowd cheers) how’s the band doing? …how’s the people over there in the stands, how are you guys? (crowd cheers) and how’s everybody over here in these stands? (crowd cheers) alright…now what about you guys way back there on the hill? (crowd cheers) what about the folks in the bleacher seats? (crowd cheers) what about everybody down on the dance floor? (crowd cheers) alright!...that’s good…because before I go tonight, there’s one thing I gotta know…before I leave, there’s one question that I need an answer to…you see, what I came all the way home to New Jersey to find out is (crowd cheers) I mean what I really wanna know is (crowd: “What?”) what I came back here to find out is (crowd: “What?”) I mean what I need to know is (crowd: “What?”) I mean what I need to know down deep inside is (crowd: “What?”) I mean there’s just one thing that I gotta know tonight, I mean (crowd: “What?”) I mean what I need to know is (crowd: “What?”) I mean what I’ve got to know is (crowd: “What?”) I mean what I need to know is (crowd: “What?”) I mean what I want to know is (crowd: “What?”) is do you love me? (crowd cheers)…”
 * 31.08.85 East Rutherford, NJ, intro to “Twist and Shout”**

“I ain’t going home yet, it’s Saturday night (crowd cheers) gotta fix my hair a little bit (chuckles)…oh, I’m alright…this is, uh…for the Jersey girls out there (crowd cheers)…”
 * 31.08.85 East Rutherford, NJ, intro to “Jersey Girl”**

“(?) so drive home real safe, ok? (crowd cheers)(?)(the band leaves the stage only to return once again)…(?) are you ready?...I hope we’re ready…I hope we know the words…here we go, key of “E”…”
 * 31.08.85 East Rutherford, NJ, intro to “Stand on It”**

//Compiled by Johanna Pirttijärvi//